Of course I knew that she had been unresponsive since January, moved to a hospice earlier this month and then her family told that her condition appeared bleak. But that didn’t matter to me. As a journalist, yes, I do believe in and trust the facts, but as a Christian, let me tell you, I believe even more in the power of prayer. And so I kept on praying for Bobbi Kristina to open her eyes and for a real miracle to come from this terrible, prolonged tragedy. Sadly, that didn’t happen and today we mourn the loss of Bobbi Kristina, who has passed away at the tender age of 22.

I’m grasping for answers, but there are none. However, I do know this: Bobbi Kristina, we will miss you, just as we continue to miss your mother, the late great Whitney Houston. It won’t be any easier to understand or cope with your death than it has been to swallow hers. To be honest, it will be nearly impossible. You deserved more time on this earth to make mistakes, grow from them, learn from them and not repeat them. You deserved a chance to make peace with yourself and the people in your life who loved you the most, even if it didn’t always feel like they did. Baby girl, like any young woman called home too soon, you deserved a chance to become your own woman and to be able to define what that meant to you. You didn’t deserve for your story to end in tragedy and heartbreak before you had a chance to leave your mark on the world. And, because of that we will continue to pray for your family and those who knew and loved you as they begin to live in a life without you in it and try to make sense of how quickly you were taken from them. They will need those prayers.

Even when we fear the worst, it’s our innate gift as human beings to never stop wishing for the best. If only Bobbi Kristina had been given the opportunity to wake up and realize how many people were rooting for her to have a second chance at a life cut painfully short and plagued with more pain and disappointment than anyone her age should bear. I hate that there will always be more headlines about her mistakes than about the love story she was born from, the love her family will always have for her, and all she could have accomplished in her life.

There will always be more questions than answers when it comes to the tragic and untimely deaths of Bobbi Kristina and Whitney. The only thing we, the fans, can pray for at this point is that they’re together and at peace, two angels united in death as they should have been in life.